


The Great Silence

by Lopadopalis



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternia, Earth, Mass Vanishing, andromeda - Freeform, cosmic horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:29:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29610141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lopadopalis/pseuds/Lopadopalis
Summary: The Alternian Empire sends a fleet to the Andromeda Galaxy to conquer its inhabitants. However, what they instead find terrifies them.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	The Great Silence

If there’s one thing that space is, it’s massive.

One thing it isn’t, unknown to most civilizations, is silent.

There are a great many planets that host millions, even billions of life forms, a fair few of them sentient. The only reason they have yet to make contact is the simple fact that they lack the technology. This, of course, makes them prime targets for colonization and subjugation at the hands of the Alternian Empire, which has thrived off of pushing around smaller planets for hundreds of thousands of years. Their current target is the Andromeda Galaxy which, just like most of the rest of the drifting galaxies, is relatively silent. This is normal, and no cause for alarm. A fleet of several thousand ships heads directly for the closest solar system, which has a pair of planets that are directly within the habitable zone. What they find, however, contradicts what their math and science as well as atmospheric examinations tells them. The planets are empty. There are houses and shops and roads and cars, but no people. It’s as if everyone vanished into thin air. They set up a colony, call it a fluke, and keep moving.

They go through ten more planets with the same pattern over the course of the next few days. Some even have entire cities and are rich in technological advancements, thriving off of nuclear power plants, spaceships, and flying cars. And yet, no people. Nothing in any of the records in their version of the internet seems to indicate that anything is off. Simply put, it’s as if everyone suddenly dissipated into the sky, leaving everything behind. The most unnerving aspect of it all is how nature isn’t reclaiming the empty husks of civilization left behind. On one of the planets, they decide to do an environmental survey and begin chopping trees open to see inside them. They appear to have stopped growing. More specifically, they have died, but their outer appearance is unchanged. Once again, the Alternian Empire tries to convince themselves that these places are simply flukes, these people clearly must have died of some virus, but we can handle it, our immune systems have adapted to everything that the universe has thrown at us at remarkable speed for thousands of years, there’s nothing deeper here, just a virus. Right? Even as they try their best to convince themselves of this false truth, one burning question remains;

Where are the bodies?

There are no mass graves, no corpses in the street, even the graveyards are empty.

Where did everyone go?

~

Two months after they’ve begun their mass exploration of the Andromeda Galaxy, things start to go south. It begins with the messages. One of the planets they stumble upon appears to have forcibly moved themselves closer to the sun so that they can harness its solar power to create a massive beacon that operates at all times, transmitting a message at all times and broadcasting it in every direction, hoping beyond hope that anyone who steps foot in this galaxy will listen. It’s a short broadcast, simple. The Alternians translate it. Their blood runs cold.

“This galaxy has been contaminated. Run. Run. Run.”

They try to convince themselves once again, that nothing’s wrong, everything’s fine, they’ll find something, they just have to keep looking. They do indeed find something, and it’s just as chilling as all the previous signs. A blockade of old ships floating through space, completely automated and armed to the teeth with all manner of weaponry. They explain through pre recorded messages as they begin an assault upon the Alternian fleet that they truly do not mean any harm, but this galaxy has been contaminated and they cannot allow the contamination to spread, this is simply quarantine. The Alternians fight long and hard, and eventually manage to destroy every automated ship, although they lose a couple hundred ships. Even still, they keep going, bound and determined to find something, curiosity drawing them deeper into the darkness of the unknown.

Shortly after that, one of their ships goes silent. One minute, the crew is accounted for and sending messages back and forth, and the next minute they have gone completely quiet. The nearest ship sends a search party aboard to determine what has happened to their fellow trolls. What they discover is that the ship is empty. Everybody has vanished. Everything is still in its place. Food is laid out in a mess hall, beds are neatly folded, bridge equipment still functions, but the crew are nowhere to be seen. They have simply ceased to exist. The Condesce orders the ship to be destroyed with the search party still on it, but the damage has already been done. Whatever they have discovered within Andromeda has spread. One by one, more and more ships go silent. Battleship Condescension leaves the fleet for dead, shooting away back home faster than the speed of light, faster than it’s ever gone, as The Condesce is seized by a deep fear and desperation she’s never felt in her entire life. Behind her, the fleet goes silent, and begins to drift through the emptiness.

~

About a year after the fleet is sent to Andromeda to colonize, The Condesce’s ship arrives at Alternia, slowly drifting towards the planet. The defense ships find it first and raise the alarm. They begin the slow and arduous process of breaking through it’s nigh-impenetrable outer metal shell. The process takes them several weeks, and when they finally manage to open it and step inside, they find… nothing. The Condesce is nowhere to be seen. The Helmsman is nowhere to be seen. The several hundred crew are nowhere to be seen. Yet, everything is in its place as if nothing has happened. This confuses the defense crew, and after much deliberation, they decide to choose a temporary leader from the heiresses, Feferi Peixes until they can figure out what to do, forced to assume that their leader is dead.

Feferi uses her newfound power to implement a multitude of policies on the Alternian youth who make up the planet’s population. One of the things she decides to do is send out fleets to the handful of galaxies that Alternia has conquered to recall their slavery of the local population and change their society for the better, sending thousands of ships out among the stars to thousands of worlds, including sending a second smaller fleet out to Andromeda. The trolls are uncertain about these reforms, but soon they begin to see them as a blessing, their lives all the better. The only troubling thing of note is how the blockade that initially discovered Battleship Condescension adrift has had mass disappearances across their ships, thousands of trolls disappearing in an instant, no trace of them remaining. This puts the blockade on high alert, but they fail to find a probable cause.

~

When the search fleet reaches Andromeda, they find that the colonies that were set up have gone silent. They find the drifting fleet, empty and quiet. And they find the signal, ringing out across the cosmos, seemingly begging them to run. After that unnerving discovery and weeks of searching, they conclude that The Condesce is most likely dead, and they make the decision to return to Alternia. As they begin the journey back home, an increasing number of their ships go quiet, and they are forced to leave them behind, too troubled by their discoveries to stop. However, when the last three ships whose crew still remain reach Alternia, they find silence. The entire population of the planet has vanished. Suburbs, cities of hive stems, remote hives, shipyards, all silent. Not a single troll can be found. All that remains is emptiness. A week after the three ships return home, their crews all disappear without a trace.

Out in space, where the dozens of fleets of thousands of ships have travelled to distant galaxies and solar systems so that they can inform them of how they are remodelling their world, they begin to notice strange things as they travel. Ships occasionally go silent, and inevitably fall behind once they run out of fuel. Every time they stop to attempt to discern what has happened, they find that the thousands of workers aboard have disappeared. This unnerves them greatly, but they continue on until they reach the colonies, informing them of the changes. Some welcome these changes. Others hate them and revolt. Some are simply indifferent. As the fleets continue onwards, they begin to notice that the colonies they have left behind are starting to go silent. At some point or another, a small group splits off and doubles back to figure out what has happened. They go silent as well. Soon, the fleets themselves are losing their crews. And then they’ve all gone silent, massive tombs without bodies drifting through the darkness. In a couple of months, the entirety of the Alternian Empire has vanished.

~

Several million light years away, a small blue planet named ‘Earth’ by its inhabitants floats through the void. The civilization on this world is sufficiently advanced by their own terms, but on the cosmic scale, they are more like children. The people on this planet are blissfully unaware of all that happens out in space, they care less about what lurks in the darkness and more about the newest phone model, what wage they will earn from their job, their terrible neighbours, fixing their broken car, finishing the book they can’t stop reading. All in all, humanity is surprisingly tame compared to what they could be. Most people have no interest whatsoever in the vast blackness above. However, organizations such as ‘NASA’ (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) do care about such things. It is their job to care. In their Earth terms, it is February 21st, 2021. The ‘state’ of ‘Texas’ is covered in snow, a bunch of ‘Redditors’ are taking on ‘The Stock Market’, and the genetic battle against the pathogen ‘Coronavirus’ rages on. NASA, however, has other concerns at the moment. They noticed a foreign object entering their solar system a couple of weeks ago, and they’ve been able to get a photo of it from one of their orbital probes. It’s a sleek red ship of some kind, drifting slowly towards the planet. Scans indicate that there is a lot of technological activity, but no signs of life or activity. It’s still about two billion miles away, but judging by its current speed, it’s estimated to arrive within three and a half months, whereupon they’ll be able to get a better look at it and see what’s inside.


End file.
